Immigration today in the United States

To understand and discuss current proposals and ideas regarding immigration today in the United States and the reform thereof, factual information must be used to argue cases for and against said proposals.

While the effects of both legal and illegal immigration can be studied various ways and the details skewered to represent one point of view or another, it would be more reasonable to evaluate the arguments against immigration.

The most-apparent misconceptions are that all Hispanics are immigrants, they all immigrated illegally, they all are Mexican and they can’t speak English.

The Migration Policy Institute lists the following statistics about immigrants in the United States:
– Approximately 316 million people lived in the United States in 2013.
– Of those, approximately 41.3 million, or 13%, were immigrants.
– Approximately 80 million people, or 25% of the population, are first- or second-generation immigrants.
– The United States attracts about 20% of the world’s immigrants.

The institute also reports the top seven immigration populations living in the United States (as well as their decennial growth since 1980) as being:

Source: Data from U.S. Census Bureau 2006, 2010, and 2014 American Community Surveys (ACS) and Campbell J. Gibson and Kay Jung, “Historical Census Statistics on the Foreign-born Population of the United States: 1850-2000” (Working Paper no. 81, U.S. Census Bureau, Washington, DC, February 2006),

The Mexican immigrant population is obviously the largest, but why are so many emigrating from Mexico? Why are so many choosing to come to the United States? And why are so many Americans against them coming to the United States?

According to PEW Research Center, in 2007 the number of illegal immigrants in the United States was 12.2 million (4% of the total U.S. population) and dropped to 11.3 million by 2014 (3.5% of the total U.S. population).

Of those 11.3 million in 2014, 5.6 million (49%) were Mexican.

Furthermore, there were 8.1 million illegal immigrants working or looking for work in the United States in 2012, accounting for about 5.1% of the total U.S. work force.

While the PEW Research Center reports the states with the most illegal immigrant workers as Nevada (10%), California (9%), Texas (9%) and New Jersey (8%), it does not clarify if these percentages are part of the total illegal immigrant workforce in the United States, the total illegal immigrant workforce of these states or the percentage of the overall total workforce of the United States or of each state.

One of the most popular questions regarding immigrants and immigration is “why should I have to press 1 for English?”

To start, there is no official language in the United States.

Second, why should those supporting free enterprise, an open-market economy and freedom of speech expect that businesses would turn away potential customers based on language? Demanding that the federal government regulate aspects of language in the business sector seems contradictory when those same people argue against the regulation of minimum wages, unionizing and workplace regulations and practices.

The other popular rhetoric is “if you come to America, you speak English.”

In 2014, MPI reported that 55 million people in the United States identified as Hispanic and 19.4 million of those (35%) identified as immigrants.

Also in 2014, 79% of the entire U.S. population (or 235.9 million people), reported that they only spoke English at home.

Also, 63.2 million people (21%) reported speaking a language other than English at home, with Spanish being the most popular selection with 62% of those 63.2 million.
But this does not mean that they do not speak English at work or even at home some of the time.

While Mexicans are immigrating each year to the United States, it is also important to note the history of Mexican immigration to the United States, federal U.S. programs that encouraged the immigration of Mexicans and other Spanish speakers, as well as the population of Mexicans and other natives living in parts of what is now the United States before they were won from Mexico.

It is important to note here that Lipski explains how the U.S. government encouraged immigration through the Bracero program, the subsidization or free travel of Puerto Rican jíbaros to work in agriculture fields and granting refugee status to many Cubans throughout the Castro regime (1959-2008) and, specifically, to more than 125,000 Cubans in 1980 alone during the Mariel boatlift.

Today’s reasons for Mexicans immigrating to the United States have to do with work opportunities.

In fact, The World Bank marks the Gross Domestic Product (GPD) of the United States at $17.42 trillion as of 2014.

According to Investopedia, GPD is, in a simplified way, a summary of what all residents either earned or saved.

Or as CNBC explains it, GDP represents the total dollar value of all goods and services produced over a specific time period. In short, it’s “everything produced by people and businesses, including salaries of workers.”

The organization also shows that of the 125.4 million people living in Mexico, 53.2% live in poverty.

This essentially means that any immigrant coming from a country with a lower GDP than the United States (which is every country in the world according to Knoema.com) will experience a higher standard of living.

In December 2014, the Mexican government announced that the minimum wage in Mexico would increase by 4.2%, making the new minimum wage only $70.10 Mexican pesos, or $4.80 USD when $1 USD was worth about $14.56 Mexican pesos.

Brian Fore

Photo by Brian Fore

However, by December 2015 the exchange rate made the USD worth about $17.09 Mexican pesos, meaning the wage of $70.10 Mexican pesos was only worth $4.10 USD.

That December, the Mexican government announced the minimum wage would increase in 2016 to $73.04 Mexican pesos per day, or about $4.27 USD.

That is only about $93.94 USD per month, working five days per week.

In July 2015, the national minimum wage in the United States was increased to $7.25 USD.

As of April 2016, the exchange rate for $1 USD is $17.58 Mexican pesos, meaning working for one hour at $7.25 USD is equal to $127.46 Mexican pesos.

That is more than a month’s wages working in Mexico working the minimum daily wage.

To put that into context and how that ties with immigration to the United States, let’s take a look at those states and cities with the highest concentrations of Mexican immigrants and what those hourly wages look like.

However, Arizona and Texas have no such plan to raise minimum wages to $15.00 per hour, or any other target figure. The minimum wage in Arizona is $8.05 per hour with annual adjustments based on the Cost of Living Index, and Texas is adamantly set at $7.25 per hour.

This is a brief explanation and synopsis of the political climate concerning immigration policy in the United States.

But what do they presidential primary candidates have to offer the America people and immigrants alike regarding immigration policy and reform, amnesty, work and wages?